What It Takes (16 page)

If there was something they wanted to know about Bush, well, that was fine, too. John Sununu in New Hampshire: Bush got onto him the minute Sununu won in ’82. Talked with him during the ’84 reelection, and went back, over and over, during the midterms in ’86. Had a real meeting of the minds there, on domestic issues, the limits on government. And Bush convinced him, worked at convincing him, that he really had flipped over on abortion: solidly against it now—except the life of the mother, or rape, incest, that kind of thing. ... John Ashcroft in Missouri, got elected in ’84, completely different background: evangelical, a gospel singer, father was a minister. He had to be convinced, too, that Bush was “right” on abortion now. So Bush convinced him, or rather Ashcroft became convinced that Bush and he had common ground.

Fact was, there was common ground with everyone, when George Bush wanted to be friends. It wasn’t so much the public stuff, the speech, though that was charming, in its way. “Don’t worry,” he’d say on stage, in front of the flags, at the funder. He’d toss both hands up over his shoulders, palms out, a quick gesture of accommodation, half reassurance, half surrender. “Not gonna give you the full load ...” Like they didn’t really want to hear from
him.
He wasn’t gonna take up their time, just talking. “Just happy,” Bush would say, “... here with my friend,
and I mean friend ...
” Then he’d name the guy he was with: Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin, Carroll Campbell in South Carolina, Garrey Carruthers in New Mexico, “... be a GREAT Governor ...”

And he meant it, at least the friend part: even if he didn’t know them well, even if they knew he’d want their help next year, they could feel how much it mattered to him. It was an animal thing, like a tail wagging, wagging his whole ass back and forth. He wanted to be their friend. And by the time they banked the gate from that fund-raiser, and they got the handwritten note he did on the plane going home, when they got another check from his Fund for America’s Future, when they got the signed photo from his office, and the follow-up invitation to come to breakfast at the White House, or stay at the Residence, or burgers and bloodies in the backyard on Sunday, or troll for bluefish on the boat in Maine, when they heard from a fellow Governor, or someone they knew at the White House, that Bush was mentioning how much he
liked
them ... well then, damn right he’s a friend!

Meanwhile, he’d get them up in
Air Force Two,
or have them into the hotel suite after the big fund-raiser, and he was just terrific! Able, funny, confidential ... and smart: he knew a few things about their states. Or, more likely, he knew people. One of the Governors would mention he was up in a certain county last week, and heard nice things about Bush there. “Oh, d’ya see Will Simmons?” Bush would ask. “He was County Chairman in ’73 ...” Bush had the name at instant command from thirteen years before, when he headed the Republican National Committee. (As a matter of fact, it wasn’t Will, it was Will, Jr., whom Bush had phoned, just to say hello, when he flew in to his college town to give a speech in 1979.) And Bush knew what the issues were, what the Governor had been doing: that fight about the nuclear plant, the problem with the State Court of Appeals. ... As a matter of fact, he’d heard about them
yesterday
, from Andy Card, who was the Bush State Chairman in Massachusetts in 1980. And what was Andy Card doing now? Well, he went to work in the White House—Deputy-Under-Something for Intergovernmental Relations—and when the A-Team started to focus on the Senate, Andy suggested that he could help out ... take the Governors off their hands. In fact, knowing everything about the Governors (and the State Comptrollers, Attorneys General, the Speakers of the House, and other Governors-to-be) became Andy’s specialty, and his work for the taxpayers of this nation. What a Great and Good stroke of fortune for Bush! ... What a Blessed Confluence of happenstance!

It seemed always to happen for Bush—the Blessed Confluence. He just tried to be a friend, and it worked out. Even he couldn’t understand why. But that’s the way it worked in the five-minute devotions, homilies on how the good life is lived, which Dottie Bush read to her children, every day at breakfast.

Good things happen to good people. It was one of those truths he’d just always known.

Much later, when he was grown up, a millionaire man of the world, Bush heard the same lesson from his own minister. The Reverend James T. (Tom) Bagby, Rector of St. Martin’s Episcopal, in Houston, had a homily he’d tell in church, a lesson from his own life. ... When Tom was going to seminary, the Bishop awarded him one-third of a scholarship, the gift of a wealthy and gracious lady. That year, Tom wrote her a letter every month. The next year, the lady instructed the Bishop that Tom was to get the whole scholarship. Why, the Bishop asked her, did she want to give the full amount to a student so undistinguished? Reverend Tom always concluded:

“Perhaps it’s because I did what my mother taught me. Expressing my gratitude was the very least I could have done. ... Large rewards come from planting small seeds of gratitude.”

Lord knows, George Bush had strewn the ground with seeds.

He’d see Tom this Sunday at church. He had a day off scheduled for Sunday, in Houston. Just heaven! A day with no speeches, no press. Just church in the morning and a golf game with his old friend Fred Chambers in the afternoon. Then, maybe a rubdown in the Houstonian’s private health club. Then, more friends for dinner—Molina’s, his favorite Tex-Mex place. It’d be a great day, a great weekend in Houston. Friday, he’d do one event for Tommy Thompson, in Wisconsin, and then he’d get into Houston about three-thirty in the afternoon. (There’d be no midnight, down-to-the-wire flights for George Bush.) Then he’d spend four nights in a row there, until Tuesday morning, when he and Bar would jump in the limo and ride five minutes to vote at their precinct, just down the road from the hotel.

It was perfect, the way it worked out. There was a tough race for Governor in Texas, too. So Bush could spend his last day, Monday, hopping his home state with his friend Bill Clements: Mesquite, El Paso, College Station ... lots of friends in those places. Then back to Houston for one last event, the big one, at the Galleria. That would be the best of all.

In the Power Cabin, Bush had his bible out and was looking over the schedule. He could see the finish line coming. He ripped out the Wisconsin pages, wadded them up. “That’s done,” he said. It wasn’t a gesture of annoyance, or even impatience. There was an air of satisfaction in the front of
Air Force Two
. Bush was up—everybody noticed.

The plane was packed with staff—thirty rooms reserved at the Houstonian, and that wasn’t even counting the Service—and everyone telling him things were going well. Not that he had to ask. He knew he was getting a good reception. He could read a poll, too. And he knew he’d done a job: covered a lot of miles, lot of races, made a lot of friends. Anyone who stuck with him for a day saw it wasn’t like ’84, with the press always on him, comparing him to their darling, Ferraro, picking him over like some mysterious creature that crawled out from under a rock:

Wouldn’t you call that a preppy watchband?

When did you stop wearing button-down shirts?

Why do you wear those short socks?

That was the worst, ’84, when it got so nasty and personal. It got to him, he had to admit. It was “rasping.” That was his word for it. Running around like he did that year—like they all did in ’84—he didn’t even feel like he was helping the government. No one got anything done. As for him, he was cutting ribbons. Made him wonder what the hell it was all for.

But now, that futile feeling was gone. Now, he was turning the corner. Soon, there wouldn’t be any more joint events, other people’s crowds to please, other people’s hosts to thank. Soon, it would be George Bush for President ... he’d waited six years to say that simple phrase again. Just a couple of days now, and it was his turn again. And he’d made it through this last go-round without any major mistakes. He was coming in strong, far better than when he started the last time—just him and young David Bates, flying commercial, flying coach! “Steerage,” he used to call it.

He grabbed a fistful of popcorn and leaned back in his big chair. Yeah, different now. ... Fuller was in the corner, quiet, as always. Atwater was on the bench, talking about Tommy Thompson. Looked good for Thompson in Wisconsin. Looked good, in a lot of the races they’d hit, Lee said.

Bush grunted assent. He had a mouthful of popcorn. He knew good news that none of them knew yet. Still delicate. Wouldn’t say anything with them in the cabin. ... Hard to know if it’d really happen, anyway. In fact, it wasn’t until the next day, Saturday, at the Houstonian, he’d confide to Fuller: “Looks like we might have some good news on the hostages.”

It took Fuller by surprise. The way he had the office set up, Fuller sat astride the channel for classified security stuff. And he hadn’t heard anything about a hostage.

“Really?”

“Yeah, one for sure. One more, maybe two ... maybe tomorrow.”

And sure enough, on that blessed church-and-golf Sunday, an American hospital administrator named David Jacobsen was freed on a street in West Beirut, after seventeen months as a hostage of the Islamic Jihad.

That was the frosting on Bush’s cake. And he was pretty sure there would be more. Timing up in the air ... but they had a lever now. At least they were on the right track. At last, they were talking to the right people!

Bush swung into his last day, his Texas tour, with such a happy air, he was like a kid. In Mesquite, that morning, he told the crowd: “Go out and vote tomorrow, as often as you can!”

In El Paso, he appeared with the GOP’s Attorney General candidate, Roy Barrera, a
Hispanic
—whose cause so thoroughly enchanted Bush that he attempted Barrera’s slogan—
in Spanish! ... “¡Voy con Roy!
” (It was the moral equivalent of “I Like Ike.”) ... By the time they hit College Station, Bush was so enthralled with his new friend that he yelled:

“
Voy con Roy!
It’s not just a slogan! It’s a way of life!”

By the time he’d worked through the day, back to Houston, he was ready to let it all out for the last big Monday crowd. They called the event at the Galleria mall the “Texas Victory ’86 Rally.” But it really had more to do with Bush, in ’88. The Clements campaign didn’t want a big deal: they suggested a simple press conference—just enough to get their man on the local news at six-thirty. It was the Bushies who got the bit in their teeth—insisted on a mega-event, a crowd to fill the Galleria skating rink. It was the Bush people who found the money to put down a floor over the ice, to bus in a half-dozen high school bands, to provide two hours of entertainment to pack the place. The Advance was incredible. The Clements people had never seen anything like it. The Bushies signed on the Houston Astros’ announcer, Milo Hamilton, as emcee. They brought in a few Astros to build the crowd. They hired on country bands, jazz bands, rock ’n’ roll bands ... signs, balloons, giant flags. The scale of the thing was, well ... Presidential. The Bush team didn’t even observe the pretense that this was for Clements. This was for Bush, the kickoff. The Bushies wore special T-shirts while they gussied up the mall. The shirts read: “In the Rink ... On the Brink.”

And when Bush walked in, the place went sky-high. There were more than a thousand people packed into the rink below, hanging off the balconies ... all the way to the roof! The bands were blaring. The noise was amazing. Everybody agreed he got as good a reception as Clements—maybe better. It even knocked
him
out. He stood on stage with Bar, just looking around the balconies, his mouth hanging open in a grin. Yeah, it was going to be different, this time. ... It was going to be fun! Jeez, all the friends he could see in the crowd. He was pointing, making faces at them. Bar would spot some more, and point them out to him. Then Alan Ashby showed up, the catcher from the Astros. They made Poppy throw the ball again. So he wound up and flung it, good and hard this time, straight across the rink. And Ashby caught it, and the crowd gave a terrific whoop. ... And Bush was happy, home, among friends, and on his own. He’d made the turn,
his
turn now, and it was coming together, it was going to be okay, it would be ...

How could he tell them? He’d never been too good at saying ... people just had to feel it with him. They were on the right track. He knew it. The people would vote tomorrow, they’d ratify ... it was important. How could he say? ...

So he started with the names, the persons: Bill Clements for Governor, my friend ... and Roy Barrera for Attorney General, my new friend,
Voy con Roy!
... the Congressional candidates ... all the Republicans, all friends of his ... and he was talking without text for once, not a speech, and a lock of his hair had fallen on his forehead, like it always did, when he really got going ... the most important day, tomorrow, the big day ... we’ll be voting, we’ll be sending the word, showing our colors ...

He was standing in front of a Texas flag, twenty feet tall. And now, from the floor, a huge Stars and Stripes began to rise in front of the Lone Star, climbing to the rafters behind him as he spoke.

“We’ll be doing the Lord’s work,” Bush said, “for our great city of Houston and the state of Texas ...”

It would be blessed.

So, the next day, he jumped into the limo, and he and Bar voted and made for the plane. On the way back to D.C., the staff gathered with him, packed in the Power Cabin, and gave their assessment of where he stood. Looked good, they agreed: he’d made the turn; no mistakes.

And that night, he and Bar had a few friends at the Residence—maybe twenty people—to watch the returns. It was a shock, the Senate thing. ... Of course, the networks spent the whole night on that. ...

But the bright spots (the only bright spot for Republicans, Brokaw said) were the Governors. The GOP just about swept those clean—picked up eight statehouses that night. There were twenty-four Republican Governors now, and George Bush had spent time with them all. Even he was surprised how well that went. He spent half the night on the phone in his study, while the White House switchboard tracked down the winners. And just when he had one on the line, Lee Atwater would run in with more-news: Carroll Campbell in South Carolina! CBS called it for Thompson! Clements pulling away in Texas! Wasn’t it amazing the way it worked out? The only people who won were the people he helped. His friends! What a Great and Good stroke of fortune!